Frederik Jozef Belinfante (6 January 1913 – 5 June 1991) was a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

and a professor at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

. He was a proponent of the hidden variable interpretation of quantum mechanics. Belinfante was born in

the Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

and was a student of H. A. Kramers at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...

. His Ph.D. thesis, published in 1939, is called 'Theory of Heavy Quanta'. Belinfante emigrated to

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

in 1946 and became an associate professor at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

. Two years later, in 1948, he moved to the United States and became a professor at Purdue. There, he studied

quantum theory Quantum theory may refer to: Science *Quantum mechanics, a major field of physics *Old quantum theory, predating modern quantum mechanics * Quantum field theory, an area of quantum mechanics that includes: ** Quantum electrodynamics ** Quantum ...

and

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...

. While writing his Ph.D. thesis, Belinfante co-authored a paper with

Wolfgang Pauli Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (; ; 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics fo ...

called 'On the statistical behaviour of known and unknown elementary particles' Along with

Léon Rosenfeld Léon Rosenfeld (; 14 August 1904 in Charleroi – 23 March 1974) was a Belgium, Belgian physicist and Marxist. Rosenfeld was born into a Jewish secularism, secular Jews, Jewish family. He was a polyglot who knew eight or nine languages and ...

, Belinfante derived the

Belinfante–Rosenfeld stress–energy tensor In mathematical physics, the Belinfante–Rosenfeld tensor is a modification of the energy–momentum tensor that is constructed from the canonical energy–momentum tensor and the spin current so as to be symmetric yet still conserved. In a cla ...

. Belinfante's works include ''Measurement and Time Reversal in Objective Quantum Theory'' (1975) and ''Survey of Hidden Variable Theories'' (1973)'','' both part of the ''Monographs in Natural Philosophy'' series.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Belinfante, Frederik 1913 births 1991 deaths Scientists from The Hague Purdue University faculty 20th-century Dutch physicists Dutch emigrants to the United States Fellows of the American Physical Society Dutch expatriates in Canada